Firebird is a choice-based visual novel that takes about an hour and a half to play. The story is set in the northern borderlands of contemporary Russia, where a Hungarian migrant named Mariska makes her living as a freight trucker.

Since she’s in the country illegally, Mariska had to take out the loan for her truck, the Firebird, from a local mob boss. When she’s caught after trying to flee the boss’s territory without paying the interest on her loan, Mariska crosses paths with a strange girl in traditional clothing named Vassilissa, who promises great riches if Mariska will deliver food to her village in the far north.   

Your job as the player is to navigate between points on the map as Mariska and Vassilissa head steadily northward. There’s no backtracking, so you’ll have to choose between multiple routes while ensuring that the Firebird doesn’t run out of gas. The game is entirely text-based, and the elements of resource management are fairly chill.

More than anything, the gameplay is about roleplaying as you explore the dialogue options. It’s possible to die, but doing so will simply restart the game at a crucial choice. As the player, you’re mostly just along for the ride. And what an incredible ride it is.

At each point on the map along her route, Mariska is able to leave her truck and search for gasoline or money (which can occasionally be used to buy gas). The road is littered with the ruins of old villages and Soviet outposts, but a few of the waystations are still populated. The humans Mariska and Vassilissa meet are friendly, but the wolves and bears are another story entirely. To make matters worse, the mob boss has sent his henchman Ivan to pursue Mariska in his truck, the Gray Wolf.  

As you might have guessed from the character names, which are drawn from Slavic folklore, there are supernatural forces at play. Over the course of her journey, Mariska encounters various legendary characters, from the crafty witch Baba Yaga to the warrior princess Maria Morevna. The gradual shift from gritty realism into the realm of a fairy tale is a lot of fun, especially when the seemingly absurd advice offered by characters along the way begins to make perfect sense. Thankfully, Mariska is nothing if not pragmatic, and her no-nonsense attitude is exactly what she needs to get the job done.   

Firebird’s developers, Ludogram, are based in France, but they’ve devoted love and care to bringing the Russian setting to life. The luminous ligne claire artwork of Quentin Vijoux invites the player onto the northern tundra while conveying a strong sense of lingering twilight and freezing cold. Despite Firebird’s celebration of Slavic folklore, the game’s narrative makes no attempt to hide its criticism of the Russian state, especially the collusion between government and organized crime. There’s also a haunting scene with Soviet ghosts that I found genuinely chilling.

Although it’s possible to see an entirely different variation of the game’s story during a second playthrough by having Mariska drive through a different set of points on the map, the destination is always the same. No matter what path you choose, Firebird connects to universal themes as it acknowledges the cycles of nature – between winter and summer, and hardship and plenty, and faith and hard work. The bad times won’t last forever, Firebird suggests, and Mariska will keep on trucking.